6 Tips for a Killer B2B Email Marketing Campaign

Do you open every single email you receive? If you’re like most people, the answer is probably a hard no.

And just because your audience can access their email anytime, anywhere, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re opening more emails.

In fact, the opposite may be true as B2B email marketing continues to grow and email inboxes are filling up faster than ever before.

The truth is, it’s overwhelming. But by no means is email marketing dead. It’s alive and well as long as you do it right! So let’s discuss how you can make your email open rate dreams a reality. Here are six tips for creating a killer B2B email marketing campaign.

Create Compelling Subject Lines

Let’s start with what’s arguably the most important part of your email: the subject line. It’s the first thing your audience will see when they open their email inbox, so you want to make it as compelling as possible. A good (or bad) subject line has a huge influence on whether your email gets opened and read—or gets sent right to “junk” without any further consideration.

Successful subject lines often convey things like:

• A personalized message
• A sense of urgency
• An immediate benefit
• Compelling, relevant statistics or evidence

Sound like a lot to ask for a mere seventy characters or less? It is. But once you get the hang of writing subject lines and understand what resonates with your audience most, it gets easier. To get started creating compelling subject lines, try using a subject line rating tool. Then, all you need to do is continue tweaking your subject lines until they achieve your desired results.

Craft Your Preview Text Carefully

There’s a lot to be said for preview text. It may not seem that important compared to the actual email content, but it is. Carefully crafted preview text that strikes the right balance between creativity, specificity, and usefulness can be a very effective tactic for increasing email open rates.

Think of preview text as your hook. Next to your subject line, preview text is what piques the interest of your audience and drives them to open your email. Try to convey a sense of mystery or urgency. Or touch on a known pain point. And be sure to customize the preview text for every email in your campaign.

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

Nothing drives successful email marketing campaigns more than personalization. With so much data available today, it’s easier than ever to personalize your email marketing well beyond just the recipient’s name. And personalize, you should. The more you can tailor your email marketing campaigns to reach your audience where they’re at in their buyer’s journey, the more effective your emails will be.

Developing buyer personas is one way you can take email personalization to the next level. Buyer personas help you better understand your customers because they’re based on real data (and possibly a few educated guesses), so they enable you to create tailored emails with a higher chance of being well-received by your audience.

Address Pain Points and Add Value

There are two keys to long-term email marketing success: addressing your audience’s pain points and adding value. Without addressing the pain points of your audience, you won’t be able to add value. If you’ve developed buyer personas, you likely have an idea of your audience’s pain points and needs and can use that as a starting point. If you haven’t consider reading this blog post on creating buyer personas you’ll actually use.

To deliver real value, rather than focusing on selling, you should focus on providing content that your audience finds helpful and that’s relevant to where they’re at in their buyer’s journey. For example, if you know that the persona you’re targeting struggles with creating budgets, consider sending out an email campaign that features strategies and tips for effective budgeting.

Design Responsively

Your email marketing campaigns should look just as good (if not better) on mobile devices than they do on desktops. The fact of the matter is that more people are opening emails on their smartphones or tablets than anywhere else, so if you’re not designing with responsiveness in mind, you’re alienating your audience. Providing the best possible experience will pay off and result in improved click through and conversion rates, ensuring a positive return on your marketing investment.

Always Be A/B Testing

To figure out what truly works for your audience, testing is key. And in email marketing, there are many different opportunities for testing that can contribute to the success of your campaigns. One of the most common A/B tests for email marketing is, of course, subject lines. To determine which is most effective, simply send two varying subject lines to two different groups of subscribers and see which one has the best open rate.

Once you have a few good formulas for subject lines nailed down, consider testing the content of your email itself. If you have a CTA button in your email, you can try changing the button copy or color. Or you can test different hero images—one with a static version, and one with a dynamic GIF.

Note: When A/B testing, be sure to keep variables other than the one you’re testing the same. This will guarantee that the results are accurate.

Create a Killer Email Marketing Campaign Today

There’s a lot that goes into creating a killer email marketing campaign. And it can feel overwhelming to get started if you’re not sure where to begin. With these six tips, though, you’ll know which areas are the most important to focus on and you can get started executing your campaign right away.

If you’re want to take your email marketing to the next level by elevating your brand identity, download this B2B toolkit: Creating a Compelling & Relevant Brand Identity. If you need help crafting compelling emails, developing your brand identity, or another area of marketing, Sagefrog would love to help.